The present invention relates to a method and a device for automatically providing information by means of a search engine, in which information sought, together with other associated attributes, is stored in the form of data records.
In the field of telecommunications, large quantities of information, e.g. relating to telephone numbers of desired call partners, have to be handled. As a rule, the telephone numbers of possible call partners together with further attributes of such partners, e.g. family name, given name, company name, country, locality, postal code, street and/or house number, are stored in the search engine. Due to the multitude of possible call partners, several of these additional attributes have to be determined and interlinked in order to be able to determine the desired call partner. Up to now, this complex process has required human input in order to arrive at sensible information results.
It has already been proposed that individual steps in providing information be automated. In this context, for example printed publications U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,181,237, 5,185,781, and 5,163,083 propose that manual connection as is still common in the USA, be replaced by an automatic process for switching through. Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,303 describes a semi-automatic method for providing information in which search arguments entered by a caller, e.g. name, locality, etc. are first recorded and then in a compressed form are conveyed to a person providing information so as to reduce the time it takes that person. Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,488 describes a method and a device which, by means of a speech recognition device, queries various attributes of a desired call partner such as locality and name, so as to determine the telephone number of the desired call partner. In order to reduce the ambiguities generated by automatic speech recognition, the telephone number of the person seeking the information is recorded, and by means of this telephone number, the locality of the person seeking the information is determined, and subsequently, based on statistical considerations, the region to be searched for the desired call partner, i.e. the respective data quantity, is limited. This approach is however necessarily disadvantageous if call partners are sought who are outside the assumed geographic distribution rules.